This blog serves my Congress course (Claremont McKenna College Government 101) for the spring of 2018.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

I shall post videos, graphs, news stories, and other material there. We shall use some of this material in class, and you may review the rest at your convenience. You will all receive invitations to post to the blog. (Please let me know if you do not get such an invitation.) I encourage you to use the blog in these ways:

To post questions or comments about the readings before we discuss them in class;To follow up on class discussions with additional comments or questions.To post relevant news items or videos.

There are only two major limitations: no coarse language, and no derogatory comments about people at the Claremont Colleges.

1 comment:

I have some trouble with Novick's ad, because it sends mixed messages. On the one hand, the "punchline" plays up Novick's unique history pretty effectively. But on the other hand, the other guy--that is, "you"--looks quite bored throughout. The message seems to be "it doesn't matter who you want to have a beer with, or who you find more personable--go with the guy with substance." That's a risky statement, and it doesn't help that Novick is talking very broad campaignspeak terms. A safer bet: Make your candidate look like a guy you would want to have a beer with, chatting comfortably and knowledgably about foreign policy...and oh yeah, he's an amputee too! Or, alternatively, don't put him in a bar.

Tester's ad was fun but style definately beat substance. As in the first, the visuals overpowered the political content of the audio. (Then again, maybe that's the point.) I did like the line "making Washington look more like Montana." So many candidates come off as incongruously combative when they talk about cleaning up DC corruption. This way is more gentle, and it praises the electorate at the same time.

Steele's was my favorite. It got out in front of incoming attack ads in a lighthearted way, and so wasn't an attack itself. The flying text was a bit infomercially, but it hit you with political content, instead of swallowing it.